Biden won't have challengers in NC 2024 primary election, state Democratic Party decides

Democratic President Joe Biden appears headed to an automatic victory in North Carolina's 2024 Democratic Party primary election. The North Carolina Democratic Party has declined to allow any Biden challengers onto the ballot for March's elections.

At least two politicians, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) and Marianne Williamson, a self-help author from California who also ran for president in 2020, have mounted challenges to Biden this year.But unless they fight for it, they won't be allowed to be on the ballot in North Carolina. The State Board of Elections voted Tuesday to accept all the lists of candidates for the primary submitted by the state's political parties, including the Democratic Party's Biden-only selection.

Tommy Mattocks, a spokesman for the North Carolina Democratic Party, defended the decision to make Biden the only option. He's the only one who's worked to earn it, he said.

"In order to get on the ballot, you need to have donors in the state, and be actively campaigning in the state," he told WRAL. "Neither of them have been here this cycle. This is the standard that we have used in all previous cycles."

The Williamson and Phillips campaigns have criticized the decision, but they didn't immediately say whether they would fight to get on the ballot here.

"The Democratic Party is doing everything possible to remove any candidates from the ballot that aren’t named Joe Biden," Williamson spokeswoman Sydney Goldstein told WRAL. "From Florida to Tennessee and now North Carolina, they’re doing what they can to suppress other candidacies. We are tracking the pattern and researching our options going forward.”

In a statement earlier this month after the North Carolina Democratic Party tentatively voted on the plan to ask the elections board to put only Biden on the ballot, Phillips said it happened "for reasons that remain as inexplicable as they are dangerous."

"If Joe Biden is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump and lead us to a safer, more affordable future, let him compete for that privilege without his supporters suppressing and disenfranchising millions of voters," Phillips wrote in a statement.

The state Republican Party put seven candidates on the ballot Tuesday, including former president Donald Trump, after the board dismissed a legal challenge seeking to ban Trump from appearing on the ballot.

The Libertarian Party put 10 candidates on the ballot, including a Massachusetts man who requested to be listed simply as "Toad."

That led to some consternation from the elections board, as officials wanted to at least include his last name. Republican board member Stacy "Four" Eggers IV said he's obviously sympathetic to people who go by unorthodox nicknames, but thought voters needed more information about who a candidate is.

A GOP precedent for Biden

In 2020 the North Carolina Republican Party made a similar effort to what Democrats are proposing now, attempting to put only Trump on the ballot for the GOP primary when he was the incumbent president.

But following legal challenges, two Trump challengers — Joe Walsh and Bill Weld — were allowed to appear on the ballot in the 2020 Republican primary. In the end Trump won with 93% of the vote.

Also in 2020, Biden was one of 15 Democratic candidates on the ballot in the North Carolina primary that year. He won North Carolina's primary election with 43% of the vote, followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with 24%.

In the general election in 2020, Trump won North Carolina with 49.9% of the vote, compared to 48.6% for Biden. North Carolina has voted for a Democrat just once for president since 1976; Barack Obama won the state in 2008, with Biden as his vice president.

No Labels, no primary

As the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian primary ballots shaped up Tuesday, leaders of the state’s newest political party — the No Labels Party — said they’re still weighing whether to put forward a presidential candidate.

“The American people right now do not want past repeat of the current leaders in the Democratic and Republican Party in the presidential primary campaigns,” former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican who serves as No Labels' national co-chair, told reporters during a video news conference. “And we firmly believe as a team that America deserves a better choice and we're working on that process to possibly have another choice for them.”

There won't be a No Labels primary in North Carolina, since the deadline has now passed, but the party could still choose a candidate to put on the ballot for the general election in November. The Green Party is in a similar position.

No Labels leaders have long said it only exists to offer another option in the presidential race if they don't like the Democratic and Republican presidential front runners who emerge from those parties' primaries. “The only instance where there's a real opening for an effort like this is if the two major party nominees are profoundly unpopular, and they are,” said Ryan Clancy, the party’s chief strategist.

No Labels qualified as a North Carolina political party in August, meaning it can appear on ballots in the state, where it has about 5,000 affiliated voters — a fraction of a percent of North Carolina’s 7.4 million voters. Unaffiliated voters make up the largest bloc of North Carolina voters.

North Carolina state law requires newly formed parties to nominate candidates by convention instead of a primary. No Labels is either on the ballot or seeking access in about 27 states this year, with a goal of eventually entering elections in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

WRAL politics editor Jack Hagel contributed reporting.